*Price above based on 1-year term before application of coupon code/introductory discount. While you may pay less for the first year of hosting, unless otherwise indicated, the pricing displayed on this page is the 1-year term renewal rate. Star ratings based on a 0.5 minimum to 5 star maximum scale. Why you can trust this StableHost review. >

The Bottom Line

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

We like StableHost’s low-cost, user-friendly approach to web hosting. There are no asterisked prices, and no need to hunt down fine print renewal pricing. In-fact, there are no “introductory” prices. The prices listed are the prices for the first billing cycle and for renewals.

In addition to cheap pricing, positives include the cPanel control panel, the Softaculous applications installer, a 100% reliability rating, and above-average page-load speed.

On the down side, StableHost does not provide phone or chat support; and they are not listed by the Better Business Bureau.

On balance, StableHost has earned the NCM Online designation of RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS.

Ranking

Review

If nothing else, StableHost should be lauded for having the most consumer-friendly hosting provider website we’ve ever seen. A hosting site without the need to utilize asterisks and the accompanying explanatory fine print is a rare thing in an industry known for less-than-consumer-friendly practices. But there is more to like about StableHost.

HOSTING PLANS

StableHost offers three shared web hosting plans, Basic, Stable, and Plus. Otherwise identical in every way, they differ only in price and the amount of disk space provided.

The cheapest plan, Basic, is available at only $3.62 per month for a 1-year term renewal, and provides 3GB of disk space. The next-cheapest plan, Stable, costs $5.45 per month for a 1-year term renewal, and includes 7GB of disk space. The costliest plan, Plus, is priced at $9.12 per month for a 1-year term renewal, and includes a 20GB of disk space.

All StableHost shared plans are backed by a 99.9% uptime guarantee; 24/7 e-mail support; and a 45-day money-back guarantee.

PURCHASE PROCESS

As is our practice, we selected the cheapest available shared plan — Basic — for purposes of testing and review. StableHost utilizes a consumer-friendly, 4-step checkout process.

Step 1 requires the entry of a domain name to be associated with the account. We entered our domain and clicked the “Continue” button.

Step 2 provides for the selection of billing cycle, and a choice of datacenters. As we required hosting for testing and reviewing purposes, we selected the shortest available term, 6 months at $3.95 per month. We selected the default datacenter location (Chicago, IL) and clicked the “Add to Cart” button.

Step 3 provides the opportunity to review the order and the amount to be billed, as well as the opportunity to enter and validate a StableHost coupon code. We clicked the “Checkout” button.

StableHost Softaculous applications installer. Click to enlarge.

StableHost pricing page. The prices you see are the prices paid when first ordering and for renewals. There are no asterisks. There is no fine print. Click to enlarge.

Step 4 requires the entry of billing information, the selection of a password, as well as the selection of security question and answer. Available payment options include Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, and PayPal. Step 4 also provides an option to prevent StableHost from saving your credit card information for future billing. A very-consumer-friendly practice, this was the first time we had encountered this option on a hosting provider’s website.

We selected our preferred payment method, PayPal, agreed to the Terms of Service, and clicked the “Complete Order” button.

SETUP

Three minutes after placing our order, we received the StableHost “Your web hosting account is now set up” e-mail. We were pleased to see that it provided all of the information required to set up our test site quickly and easily. The e-mail included billing cycle information, control panel login, nameserver information, FTP login, and e-mail settings.

We then proceeded to upload our test site to the StableHost server via FTP. We then set up our Dotcom Monitor page-load speed and reliability testing and waited for the test data to accumulate.

Page-load speed and uptime testing for our simple 1-page test site began on 2/22/15 and concluded on 3/4/15. We are pleased to report that StableHost proved to be reliable, recording a 100% uptime rating throughout the 10-day testing period — which included 1055 separate server reliability checks (see Uptime Test Results Chart above right).

Cons

No phone or chat support

Not listed by the Better Business Bureau

Conclusion

One of the cheapest shared hosts reviewed to date, StableHost provides a lot of bang for the buck. Worthy of your consideration, StableHost has earned 4 stars and is recommended with reservations by NCM Online.

Pricing and Features

Cheap website hosting company price comparisons based on 1-year term list price before coupon/promo codes or limited time/introductory offer discounts. These are the renewal rates for the second year of hosting. To ensure that you receive the most affordable StableHost Web Hosting pricing possible, please visit our Web Hosting Coupon Codes page for current discounts and special offers before making any purchases.

Plan

Basic

Stable

Plus

Disk Space

3GB

7GB

20GB

Bandwidth Allowance

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Hosted Domains

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

E-Mail Accounts

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

SSD Hard Drives

Included

Included

Included

Real 24/7 Technical Support

Included

Included

Included

Control Panel Features

Unlimited Add-On Domains

Unlimited Sub Domains

Unlimited Parked Domains

Unlimited MySQL Databases

Unlimited FTP Accounts

Webalizer, Analog and Awstats

RVSiteBuilder Pro

Softaculous

R1Soft Daily Backups

Email Features

Unlimited E-Mail Accounts

Unlimited Forwards

Unlimited Auto Responders

Unlimited Mailing Lists

Virus/Spam Filtering

IMAP and POP3

Port 25/26 SMTP

Online WebMail

SSL POP3, IMAP and SMTP

Server Features

SSH Access

Additional fee

Additional fee

Additional fee

24/7 Server Monitoring

Starting at 24GB of RAM

Anycast Clustered DNS

SSD Drives

Litespeed Web Server

Phoenix and Amsterdam Datacenters

Developer

PHP 5.2.x, 5.3.x and 5.4.x

Percona / MySQL 5.5

Perl 5.8.8

Server Side Includes

Free Perl Module Installation

Price per Month*

$3.62

$5.45

$9.12

*Prices based on 1-year term before the application of coupon/promo codes and introductory/limited-time offer discounts. While you may pay less for the first year of hosting, the prices displayed on this page are the 1-year term renewal rates.

Company Information

StableHost believes it has quality behind its name. The company provides its customers with dependable hardware, user-friendly software and experienced support staff. Its hosting plans come with free website transfer and a free website builder. Both its shared and enterprise webhosting plans include unlimited bandwidth allowance, domains, and email accounts. It also offers reseller hosting plans and VPS hosting that comes complete with a SolusVM control panel.

The company offers guarantees that new customers may reassuring. Clients receive a guarantee of 99.9% uptime, a money-back guarantee that lasts 45 days, rather than the thirty days that most hosting companies offer, and a guarantee of rapid and friendly customer support 24/7/365.

The company provides easy to use control panels and simple to install software that includes social networks, chat rooms, and blogs. StableHost’s web packages come with Softaculous, a program that allows clients to install web applications with one click. Softaculous helps customers upload the top 150 internet web applications, including Drupal, PHPBB, and WordPress. Clients no longer need to read installation files and manually configure databases. Instead, they can install and set up a blog in under five minutes.

StableHost uses cPanel, which is the leading control panel software in the hosting industry. Potential clients can try out this control panel prior to purchasing a hosting package. CPanel allows even inexperienced customers to manage a web hosting platform. The company also utilizes Litespeed, a commercial website server that is six times quicker than the Apache server that most hosting companies use. Litespeed allows websites to upload almost instantaneously.

The company uses CloudLinux, a commercial program that helps prevent server overload. If someone hacks a website and attempts to overload the server, CloudLinux automatically contains that client’s site. The remainder of the server is not affected by the hacker and the other websites sharing the server stay unharmed.

StableHost subscribers receive customer service from the beginning. Most clients are sent their login information within minutes after purchasing a plan. Service personnel are available to assist clients and provide rapid resolutions to technical issues.

PLEASE NOTE: While we attempt to provide timely and accurate information, any and all pricing, features, discounts, coupon codes, promo codes, etc. included on this page are beyond the control of ncmonline.com and are subject to change without prior notice.